Justice William Strong
Today’s Justice of the Day is: WILLIAM STRONG. Justice Strong was born on this day, May 6, in 1808.
Justice Strong was born in Somers, Connecticut, though he would spend the majority of his professional life in Pennsylvania, the state from which he would be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. He earned a B.A. (in 1828) and an M.A. (in 1831) from Yale College, before going on to attend Yale Law School (though he never earned a degree).
Justice Strong entered private practice in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1832, and would continue working as a private attorney for the next quarter-century; concurrently, he also served as a Member of the United States House of Representatives from his home state (from 1847 to 1851). He began an eleven year-long term as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in 1857, and returned to private practice (now in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) immediately after leaving that position, and worked continuously as a private attorney until his appointment to the SCUS.
Justice Strong was nominated by President Ulysses S. Grant on February 7, 1870, to a seat vacated by Justice Robert Cooper Grier. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on February 18, and received his commission that day. Justice Strong took the Judicial Oath to officially join the SCUS on March 14, and served on the Chase and Waite Courts. His service was terminated on December 14, 1880, due to his retirement.
Justice Strong was actually originally passed over to replace Justice Grier, and only ultimately joined the SCUS because the man who had successfully lobbied to succeed Justice Grier, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, died just 4 days after his confirmation by the U.S. Senate. Justice Strong wrote an opinion that constituted one of the very few victories for racial equality advocates of his era, Strauder v. West Virginia (1880), which held that categorical exclusion of African Americans from juries for no reason other than their race did indeed violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. He is also known for having sat on the electoral commission that eventually decided the contentious Presidential Election of 1876 in favor of then-Governor of Ohio Rutherford B. Hayes.